Right to abortion, what is happening now in the United States?

A few days were enough electoral campaignmonths ago, in the USA, to understand that the issue of the right to abortion would be central and that it would not go away even after the elections, whatever the result. The polls saw the triumph of Donald Trump who, unlike Kamala Harris who had brought women with stories of abortions on the stage of the Democratic convention and was aiming for a unitary law, had long ago made his idea known: no support for right to abortion at the federal level. However, the risk feared by the Democrats is that The Donald will sign the federal ban proposed by the Republicans in Congress. So far, however, Trump has always said he doesn’t want to do it (he would also have his wife against it) and added that it is up to the individual states to decide. Ten did so just as the tycoon returned to the White House.

In ten American states there was a vote, not only for the presidency, but also to include the right to abortion in the state constitutions. In seven of these states, the yes to the right to terminate a pregnancy in the local constitutional charters won, a form of protection also from possible restrictive laws at a federal level. These are Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York State. The most striking case is that of Missouri which currently has a very restrictive law. In Arizona it is forbidden to terminate a pregnancy after the 15th week, the deadline will now move between 23 and 24 weeks.

In three states the referendums were rejected. In Florida a quorum was not reached in the consultation. The ban on abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy remains. In South Dakota, 51.06 percent of voters said no to extending the deadlines for terminating a pregnancy. In Nebraska, pregnancy termination remains legal only until the 12th week in cases of pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or if there is a risk to the mother’s life.

What about the other 40 states? The situation radically changed after a Supreme Court ruling in 2022 effectively invalidated the precedent on which the right to abortion was based at a federal level. Until May 2022, he tells it a graphic from ISPI, Institute for International Policy Studies, only in Texas, Oklahoma and Mississippi were there special restrictions within 20 weeks of pregnancy. Two years later, in March 2024, he saw the same map 14 states that banned abortion: Texas, both Dakotas, Idaho, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana. There were restrictions within the twenty weeks in Arizona, Nebraska, Utah, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Only Arizona and Missouri have changed their stance toward greater openness. In the rest of the country, the right to abortion remains as it was in Roe v. Wade: the 12 weeks that complete the first trimester. Some states already voted to include it in their laws in November 2022: Vermont, California, Montana, Michigan and Kentucky. Ohio and Kansas also did so.